Thinking About Solid Seeding? / By Don Lilleboe — “For those producers thinking about growing solid-seeded sunflower for the first time, [NDSU-Minot area extension agent Kent] McKay and NDSU Fargo-based extension agronomist Duane Berglund offer several preliminary suggestions based on research and grower experience to-date:

        “If you are a first-year sunflower grower, consider holding off on solid seeding until you have some experience with this crop under your belt.  At the very least, discuss the do’s and don’ts of solid seeding with university or seed company personnel — and with veteran growers who have developed successful solid-seeding systems.

        “If you haven’t solid seeded sunflower previously, don’t do so with your entire sunflower acreage the first time around.  Ease into it, discovering and comparing what works on your farm — or what doesn’t — with solid-seeded versus conventional sunflower.

        “Plant a shorter or reduced-height hybrid — especially if your seeding rate is being increased from previous levels.  Tall types will grow even taller under higher-end populations — and may possess weaker necks, which then tend to entangle with adjacent plants.

        “Use row spacings in the neighborhood of 10 to 14 inches.  That should result in roughly equidistant spacings among plantings both within the row and between adjacent rows.

        “Be sure you’re seeding into moisture and that you have adequate seedbed packing.  As with any planting system, good seed-to-soil contact is essential.

        “Per-acre seeding rates will vary, but optimum stands at harvest appear to be somewhere in the range of 21,-24,000.”

        Narrow Rows & No-Till / By Don Lilleboe — “[Northeastern Colorado farmer Bob Barnes] is about as bona fide a dryland producer  as one can be.  His farm, lying just east of the Rocky Mountain foothills, typically attracts a paltry 10 to 11 inches of annual precipitation.  Wheat and fallow have comprised its standard cropping formula since Barnes’ grandfather homesteaded near Nunn around the turn of the century.

        “Barnes says he has ’spent most of my life trying to keep the dirt from blowing,’ running the gamut of soil conservation approaches over the course of his own five-decade career:  from 1940s-era conventional farming to blade plows; on to stubble mulching and, later, contour farming and terraces; back to block farming — and during the past decade, chem fallow no-till production in a strip-crop pattern.  Within the past several years, he also has worked oil sunflower into his no-till rotation. . . .

        “Bob Barnes’ sunflower planter is an unconventional one for his corner of the High Plains:  a modified Flexi-Coil Model 800 chisel plow trailing behind a Flexi-Coil 610 air cart.  Originally purchased for drilling wheat, the northern Colorado producer later modified the system to seed sunflower into his tall no-till wheat stubble.

        “Among the 36-foot chisel plow/planter’s key no-till features, Barnes says, are its extended-height shanks (for better trash clearance), smooth coulters (for cutting through trash), floating press wheels and ‘stealth’ furrow openers

        “Originally fitted with 16-inch sweeps and coil packers, the chisel plow — whose bar and carrying wheels are off an old Flex King seeder — underwent a no-till transformation in Barnes’ farm shop.  He installed the trash-cutting coulters in front of the seed openers, removed the original 16-inch sweeps and substituted sets of the Flexi-Coil ‘Stealth’ openers.  The openers allow him to handle heavy trash conditions with a minimum of soil disturbance and also give Barnes the option of placing fertilizer either below or to the side of the seed. . . .

        “Barnes had been planting his sunflower in 24-inch rows by corking every other row on the Flexi-Coil unit’s distribution manifold.  Toward the end of the 1994 planting season, however, he custom drilled some sunflower for a neighbor who wanted 12-inch spacings.  The success of that field prompted Barnes to seed his own 900 acres of ’95 oil-type ’flowers in 12-inch rows as well.”

        Does ‘Mid-Oleic’ Spell U.S. Sun Oil’s Future?  / By Don Lilleboe —  “Currently, cottonseed oil and hydrogenated soybean oil are the standard oils used by the domestic frying industry.  But cottonseed has a typical saturated fat content of 26 percent, while that of soybean oil is around 15-15.5 percent.

        “[Dr. Monoj] Gupta [of Frito-Lay Technologies] believes a mid-oleic sunflower oil could displace those two oils in a large segment of the domestic snack food market if its price is competitive and no consumer negatives are found with the oil.  Snack food manufacturers may be able to pay a small premium for the improved quality of a mid-oleic sun oil; but that price premium could not be substantial, he indicates. . . .

        “[Ed] Campbell [of ADM] says his company — whose subsidiary, Northern Sun, processes sunflower in plants at Enderlin, N.D., Red Wing, Minn., and Goodland, Kan. — strongly supports a transition to a mid-oleic-based oil sunflower industry.  So does Cargill, the nation’s other major oil sunflower seed processor.  ‘It’s a very logical step both for the industry and for growers,’ agrees Paul Erickson, general manager of Cargill’s multiseed processing plant at West Fargo, N.D.”

        Sandbakken Appointed New Marketing Director at NSA — “The National Sunflower Association has announced the appointment of John Sandbakken as marketing director, effective January 1.  He succeeds Jay Hesley, who resigned to open a private consulting firm.

        “Sandbakken is a native North Dakotan and a graduate of the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.  For the past 11 years, he has worked in the North Dakota Department of Agriculture’s marketing division, heading the division for the last seven years.  In that position, he assisted numerous commodity groups and private companies in their promotion of agricultural products around the world. Sandbakken has traveled extensively and has a working knowledge of the Spanish language. . . .

          “NSA President Vance Neuberger says Sandbakken will focus on the administration of NSA’s established market development programs, with particular emphasis on Mexico as a market for both U.S. sunflower oil and confection sunflower.”